In work environments in which a large number of users exchange data, in the form of documents, files, or other entities, among themselves, there is a need to provide shared resources in which any one of the number of users can access a particular document which is in a "public space" available to all. Similarly, there is a need for a mechanism by which a user who has created a document or file can place his work in this public space to be viewed by others, and if desirable edited by others. At the same time, it is desirable, in a shared-files system, to have some mechanism for security with respect to publicly-available documents, so that there can be some order and control over the contents of documents.
In the prior art there are known various techniques for facilitating such a shared-file or share-document environment. One type of multi-user software, an example of which is Xerox.RTM. GlobalView.RTM. software, provides a concept of "shared file drawers." A shared file drawer is an icon which is present on the screens of a set of users, and the contents of this drawer can be altered by anyone with access to the drawer (although certain documents may be locked as "read-only" documents). However, with GlobalView.RTM., basic access to the drawer is limited to those users who have been given the icon for the drawer by a system administrator: Further, a person with access to a particular drawer will have at least read-only access to every document in the drawer.
A variant on the "shared drawer" concept is the "shared drive" system, which is familiar from Novell.RTM. network drives. Once again, a set of users must be given access to a particular drawer by a system administrator, and for the most part a person with access to the drive has complete access to every file in the drive. Another drawback of the network drive system is that the organization of the drive, from the perspective that each user, is intimately related to the hardware structure of the local area network (LAN).
Another mechanism for enabling the sharing of files or documents relies on an "Internet" or "website" model. In this model, documents can exist via hypertext or other links from a home page. While certain documents linked to a particular website may have security properties associated therewith, such as a necessity for a password, this model once again has the drawback that a "web master" is required to control the entire security apparatus, very much in the manner of a system administrator in the above-described systems. The presence of a web master or system administrator represents a bottleneck in the usability of a system, because very often no new documents can be made available without permission of the web master. Further, a web master must be dedicated on an active, ongoing basis to the management of a website, and hypertext links within the website can become stale, i.e., lead to documents which no longer exist because the web master may not have ownership of particular documents linked to the website.
There thus exists a need for a shared-data environment which overcomes the above practical drawbacks.